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giftheck

Gareth
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Well, I did it. I restarted my Patreon account. After a lot of consideration, I figured that it definitely wouldn't hurt me to do so.

As it stands, this is much smaller in scale than I attempted previously. I recognise I am not big potatoes to think I could have several tiers, so just the one small tier will suffice.


If you would like to pledge, great! You'll get to see exclusive behind-the-scenes stuff, have 24 hour-early access to artwork and will be first in line for commissions! Speaking of, I have commissions open right now until the end of next week.

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I am opening a single commissions lot. First come, first serve.

Commissions 2023 Simple December
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Hi! Today, I made a decision about my future on fanfiction.net: I don't have one. They can't even fix their email service issues and the promised update roadmap they touted September 2022 has failed to materialise. It is clear to me that this site is no longer fit for purpose. So I will now be exclusively posting to Archive Of Our Own, under the same pseud. I will finish any started stories on there - baiscally Temporal Investigation Department - but anything new will be posted on AO3 exclusively. I have already deleted two stories I now have zero intention of continuing on FFN - Anarudi, my on-hiatus Lion King fic, and Life and Times, the third in the Reconciliation series. You can find both on AO3. The One-Shot Collection won't be deleted, I won't continue it on FFN but as they're one shots if anybody wants to read those they still can.


This means very little if you follow me on here solely, as I will continue to post here too, but I'm done with FFN. The ship is sinking, and while there have been some good times, it's time to move to a better platform.


EDIT: Previously I stated I won't delete the One-Shot Collection, but after writing the Shadow One-Shot, and given people had already started revieweing it on FFN saying "why isn't it being updated here" I decided it was for the best to delete it entirely off FFN. All other stories will remain on there, but nothing new will be posted to FFN any more.

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Hi! Once again, we reach the end of another tale! Zootopia: The War Of The Worlds has been the most fun I’ve had writing a story for a really long time, even for such a story as this is. As is customary with my stories, I’d like to give you a glimpse behind the curtain of this story.


First off is that I actually was inspired to write this after purchasing the original novel. I learned that The War Of The Worlds has actually been in the public domain for a few years by this point (and you might notice a few familiar sentences here and there where I felt it appropriate that are lifts from the novel and modified accordingly). I’ve wanted to do a story from Judy’s perspective for some time – especially since I have already done two from Nick’s, and when what started out as a plot bunny suggested half in-jest (What if The War of the Worlds, but Zootopia?) actually started to develop into a full-blown idea, I decided that this story would be best told from Judy’s perspective. Unlike those with Nick, which alternate between point-of-view sections and third-person prose, I opted to keep this strictly first-person. In the places where Judy is recounting the experiences of others, she’s recounting what they had told her, rather than those being third-person prose sections that exclude her.


Now, I mentioned earlier that I used a few modified sentences here and there, and somebody, somewhere is bound to ask why I didn’t just recycle the novel and change the names and locations around. Frankly, that just wouldn’t have worked. The novel is written from the point of view of a journalist and is full of very wordy descriptions and suchlike that just would not sound right coming from Judy or any of the other characters. So, I opted to keep to the basic structure of the original novel but rewrite it within the context of the universe presented to us by Zootopia, and that meant changing a lot of descriptions that Judy would have to make in order to make it sound at least partly-believable coming from her.


The next challenge was deciding who would take what role. If you’re familiar with Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds, you’ll remember that the Journalist is driven to London by the need to find Carrie, his lover. I used that as inspiration for Judy’s journey from Bunnyburrow, but decided to keep the novel’s idea of the person in the city being a relation – in the novel, it’s the narrator’s brother who witnesses the Martian attack on London and the sinking of the Thunder Child, while the narrator is still in Surrey, trapped beneath a house with an increasingly-erratic Curate. That line of thought gave me the idea of using Nick for that particular role. Judy would be driven back to Zootopia from Bunnyburrow for the same reasons the Musical’s journalist is driven back to London.


After that, the next thing to do was assign the analogues of the remaining characters. Sharla was an easy choice for the Ogilvy parallel, since she’s often portrayed as a successful astronaut. But because I did not want the fate of Ogilvy to befall Sharla (Ogilvy is burned to death by the Martian Heat-Ray on Horsell Common) I also created the character of Sheriff Buckshaw, who would instead suffer that fate.


Another dead-cert for me was the casting of Honey in the place taken by the Curate in the original novel, or Parson Nathaniel, if you like. Much like the Curate, Honey’s paranoia would get worse as the days go by. Unlike Sharla, Honey’s fate was always meant to be the same as the Curate’s – dragged away by the Martians – but in another tip of the hat to the Musical version, I did modify it slightly. In the novel, the Curate is left on the floor the narrator knocked him out on, while the narrator hides in the coal cellar. In the Musical, the journalist drags the Parson down into the cellar with him, and I felt this was the more ‘humane’ thing. Judy might have been driven to desperation, but she did not want Honey’s blood on her paws. Of course, it didn’t matter because the Martians found her anyway.


It might surprise you, but the character that took the place of the Artilleryman was not originally planned to be Jack Savage. Rather, I had Travis the ferret in that role originally, but after thinking about it, I felt a character who really had no connection to anybody else was needed to fulfil that role. And, as readers of my previous works might have noticed, I tend to have an alternate version of Jack in every universe I create. Jack was Judy’s uncle and a MONARCH scientist in Battle of the Kings. He was dead in the Reconciliation universe, though the character of Jack Wilde actually counts in my mind as a version of him. And, of course, there’s the played-more-straight version in the Seeds of the Future universe. So it was easy to settle upon him once I moved away from Travis. As an added bonus, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea I had when Judy and he met up in Zootopia again, about how he couldn’t even burrow a tunnel in a week that Judy could manage in a day.


The Martians themselves were also subject to change. Their machines were actually pretty fixed in design at the start, but the original idea I was going to go with was to have bipedal reptiles as the Martians. But, thinking on it, reptiles are cold-blooded – and Mars would be unbearably cold to them. Beyond that, I had grown attached to the totally-alien description of the Martians in the novel and Musical versions, and so out went the reptiles and in came the ‘brains on tentacles’.


I debated whether to have something other than bacteria kill of the Martians. I even floated Night Howlers being involved, but in the end, I kept to the bacteria idea, just modifying it slightly to make it clear that it was the natural bacteria within mammals that the Martians had imbibed that had caused their downfall.


And, of course, I kept the rollercoaster of emotions that the novel had. The Musical ends far more hopefully, but in the novel the narrator is beset with a sudden madness following the revelation of the Martians’ demise. I thought it would make sense – Judy has been through the wringer, it would have an impact on her, whether it was delayed or not.


The novel used ‘Aloo, aloo, aloo, aloo’ as the Martian war cry, and ‘Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla’ as their death cry. The Musical popularised a much bolder version of the latter as the war cry, and I kept that in my version, but opted to use the former as the cry of the actual Martians themselves.


I opted to create a majority of the artwork for this story myself, but I did want to commission a couple of my favourite artists to do some other pieces. Hence: I commissioned Ziegelzeig for a companion piece for Act 2 Chapter 3. At the time of writing this, it is still being worked on, but that’s okay: I have companion pieces for two other chapters I haven’t finished myself yet 😂


I have a PDF version of the story, set up like a short novel, lacking any of the author’s notes that the online versions have. If anybody is interested in that version, I will link it in the near future.


And I think that covers everything I wanted to cover! All that’s left to say is to thank you for coming along on this journey with me, and I hope you stick around for more stories – I still have Temporal Investigation Department to finish, and Life and Times to continue, but I reckon those will happen more slowly than this one, since very soon I’ll be back in university, studying for my Masters degree. But I will still be writing nonetheless. So, until next time!

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Fic news

3 min read

Hi, all! Here's some news for my fanfic work:


Temporal Investigation Department

I had to take a couple of months off to collect myself, but I recently completed a first draft for the first part of the fourth episode, "Mythical". I'm currently in the process of reviewing that draft. I will probably add more to it as the week continues on.


Life And Times

The first chapter of Life And Times, the next entry in the Reconiliation series following on from Grief's Reunion and Revenge's Consequence, was posted at the start of last month. Given the nature of Life And Times as a one-shot slice-of-life type of story, it will be updated sporadically.


Zootopia One-Shot Collection

I mean to return to this some day soon, when I have a better grasp on what one-shots I want to tell.


Anarudi

My Lion King fic has been on hiatus for a while and will continue to remain so until I gain enough inspiration to continue. It is not cancelled, and I have no plans to do so.


New stories

And now we come to talk of new projects. I'm currently working on an outline of a Zootopia version of H.G. Wells' immortal classic science fiction story, The War Of The Worlds. I also have ideas for two other stories in the Zootopia world, and I want to revisit another franchise as well, but that all depends on how a currently-ongoing series that absolutely will affect my idea goes.


Cancelled stories

With good news, there must also come bad news. I'm sorry to announce that Digimon Adventure Zero Two: Destiny's Reverse has been cancelled and removed from all platforms. I just lost faith in it in a way that I don't think I could regain. If anybody was following that, allow me to tell you of the ending: Millenniummon would leave a 'seed' in various times which were affected by 'distortions' owing to various Digimon incursions. These would be the battles against Ordinemon during tri., Cherubimon during Hurricane Touchdown/The Golden DigiEggs, and the original Highton View Terrace incursion, as well as the present day. When the Digidestined's Digimon all reach Mega level and defeat Millenniummon at Highton View Terrace, the seeds would activate, causing Millenniummon to return as XeedMillenniummon - an entity they cannot beat because it exists across four time periods and they only have three Digimon. They would be aided in the present by the appearance of Willis and Meiko, with their Digimon MegaGargomon, Cherubimon and Raiselmon. With XeedMillenniummon destroyed once and for all, the threat of both Dark Gennai and Millenniummon is over. The story would have ended with the realisation that Tai, Matt and Sora are now back on the path to reuniting with Agumon, Gabumon and Biyomon. For the time being the related artwork has been archived but I may restore it at a later date.

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